The plot of the movie is the most engrossing part. Jamal who grew up in the Slums of Mumbai is on the verge of answering the final question in KBC*. In police custody and accused of cheating, Jamal narrates to his interrogators how each question related to different incidents in his life and as a result his knowing the answer.
The movie starts off with a particularly well filmed scene of the cops chasing a very young Jamal as he is playing cricket on the outfields of the Mumbai airport. As the cops wind up running through the nooks and crannies of the slum, for me these were the most vivid images of the film. But sadly what started off as a very promising beginning only ends up going south after that. In a particularly improbable series of events involving Jamal escaping onto a train, landing up in Agra becoming an official tour guide at the Taj Mahal which by a more gifted director/cinematographer would have probably been the high point as far as visual imagery was concerned, in Danny Boyle's hands turns out to be a underwhelming experience.
Anil Kapoor perfectly plays the part of the show host who cannot put up with the fact that someone else will earn in a couple of hours what probably took him decades to achieve**. But what really spoilt the whole movie experience for us was the obvious mis-casting of Dev Patel as the grown up Jamal. He has the same I-am-lost-get-me-out-of-here expression in all his scenes without exception. One could probably understand the sense of awe in the scenes involving the TV show but in scenes involving Freida Pinto*** the love of his life the results come off very badly.
AR Rahman has done a wonderful job with the sound track of the movie and we think we will be buying the music CD*** soon.
To sum it up all, the plot is great, no thanks to the film crew and all credit to Vikas Swarup. With no dis-credit to Danny Boyle but this is probably the best he can do and it just did not pass muster for me. A good movie should never leave one feeling "if-only-someone-else-had-made-it"*****, unfortunately the same cannot be said of Slumdog Millionaire. If you are really tempted to watch a similar movie that is infinitely better we recommend City of God. We are sorely tempted to pick up the book though.
P.S : Any movie that shows the great Sir Jack Hobbs as Jack Hobbs is surely mediocre, the cricket aficionado part of me says.
* In the movie the show name is changed to "Who wants to be a Millionaire" targeted towards the American audience I guess.
** At the beginning of the movie his making fun of the chai-wallah is very improbable, thought most of them would probably have the same opinion but they would have expressed it in private rather in full public view. Most of our super stars are very very careful under the flash lights.
*** And we seemed to have developed a massive weakness for Ms Pinto now.......
**** If we shake off our customary laziness and get our Car CD player to work again that is.
***** Krzystof Kieslowski or the late Satyajit Ray, yeah we know we are being unfair to Boyle but then again the plot was so good it deserved a better director
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